Ordeal
by elphabathedelirious32
Summary: The sequel to The Crucible. Thirteen years later, Elphaba, Fiyero, Fala, and Liir live somewhat tranquilly in Kiamo Ko. The family's ordeal begins when they journey to Munchkinland for the funeral of a certain Eminent Thropp...
1. Thirteen Years

**A/N: Okay, chapter 1 of the sequel to _The Crucible!_ Who's as excited as I am? –looks around- oookaaaay. Well, anyway…this takes place just about thirteen years or so after the end of _The Crucible_, so the twins are fourteen. Hmmm….now what happened, again, when Elphaba's child(ren) was (were) fourteen?**

**Well…?**

**Also, who can tell me what the significance of the school is? **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

It took until I was fourteen for me to realize my parents and my brother and I were, well, _different. _Especially my mother and I.

I grew up in my father's castle. He's a prince, but surprisingly that means little. When I was young, though, we lived in the Emerald City with my aunt Glinda. She's not really my aunt, as anyone could tell. My real aunt, my mother's sister Nessarose, died a few days ago. A _house _fell on her. My mother made a smart remark when she got the letter, but her face went all tight and we knew she didn't mean it. With her, you have to not only know her very well to understand her but also know when to ignore what she says in order to tell what she really means, and even then sometimes it's impossible.

My father wrapped his arm around her and she leaned into him.

"It's my fault," she said, "I shouldn't have left her to do my job, all those years ago."

"Ssh," he told her. I looked at my twin brother Liir and he shrugged back. We had no idea what she was talking about. But that happens a lot- she doesn't talk about certain things. Her family, a lot of our time in the City- why we left, abruptly, one day when I was not yet two. I remember, though. My father says my linguistic ability- while I didn't speak early, once I did it was very soon in sentences- is probably why I can remember so far back.

My mother and I are green. I never found anything amiss about that- in the City, I had a child's obliviousness to differences and didn't leave the safe confines of Glinda's home and garden all that much besides. Ariana, Liir, and later Glinda's second daughter Ilyana were the only playmates I needed, even here, after we left, when they visited every summer and sometimes during the year, depending on how tolerant of her husband Aunt Glinda is at the moment and on how important she currently considers Ariana's and Ilyana's schooling at Madame Teastane's Female Seminary to be. There's something else my mother keeps to herself- whenever she hears the name of the Chuffrey girls' school, her mouth tightens and her eyes turn inward and she looks at Father with an inscrutable, intense expression and stays silent, uncharacteristically. But, as Mother often says after she has recovered from whatever memory the school's name, the girls could probably get a better education here, from her, than at that "pudding factory," as she disdainfully calls it with a small downturning of the corners of her lips. Ariana agrees and has apparently repeated the remark to her headmistress and it took all of Chuffrey's influence to keep her from getting expelled, according to Glinda, chiding my mother when she arrived here with her daughters in tow a week ago, before leaving again without them, "just to Munchkinland, for a few days. I need a break!". Ari has always given Aunt Glinda fits. Aunt Glinda describes her as acting like Mother, but she's less studious and intense than simply unconventional. To put it simply, she's a tomboy where my mother is an activist. Ariana wants to be an explorer, and delights in coming here, where the terrain is relatively uninhabited and society's rules do not apply in the least. I want to be just like Mother, and fight against injustice. She still does, you know. I help her, even now. I print and even write articles for the subversive newspaper she's begun, and also, when she receives, somehow, urgent letters, I help her go out to take in Animals or other rebels until they can move on, until they are forgotten by the Gale Force in the City and can return or find somewhere else safe to go. Liir takes no interest in subversion, just in fear for its consequences. He's always having minor panic attacks about it- he lacks even the _slightest_ sense of adventure, does my brother.

"I'll have to go to the funeral," said Mother at last, pulling away from Father and running her elegant hands through her long dark hair. It's darker than mine by just a little, and my skin's a lighter green, too. Aunt Glinda once put some of her powder on my face so I could see what I looked like as just myself, without the green. Mother didn't know. She'd probably have gone into a rage if she had. She does that a lot. I do it less, but sometimes I can't help myself. Father and Liir are much more even-tempered than Mother or I.

My parents still make love and they're not exactly quiet about it either. I'm frankly quite surprised they haven't had another child, but maybe that's another of Mother's secrets.

"She carried and bore you two in prison, being tortured and constantly frightened that they would make her miscarry, or would kill you," said Aunt Glinda. "You've been used as leverage against her before, you know. Maybe she just doesn't want to take that risk again." Here she had paused in her telling and made a pouty little frown with her painted lips, all acting and flirtation, the polar opposite of my firmly real, intense mother. "In fact, I'm not even sure if she uses birth control or not. I do believe Elphie's force of will could be that strong." This was obviously calculated to shock me. Glinda does that sometimes, saying things for their shock value. She's learned it from my mother but she's nowhere near as good at it, since my mother's are far less calculated. She just _does _shock people, from her skin to her thoughts to her past. She can't help it, unlike Aunt Glinda who does it to be entertaining.

My parents had what Ilyana, who inherited her mother's propensity for gossip and sensation, would call a 'glamorous' relationship. When she hears Ilyana say this, my mother's lips curl faintly upward and she says lightly, or as lightly as she ever says anything, "If you call a dismal rented room and nearly no food glamorous, of course," before she leaves to go do something else. It was an affair, that's what Ilyana means, but as my mother believes in frankness with children, Liir and I don't regard the story as spectacular and never have. The story of my mother's pregnancy in prison and of my early childhood I do find extraordinary, though. Ari seems to think that men and marriage and pregnancy spell the end of adventure in any form, but as argument I merely point to my mother. She carried twins through torture at the hands of her own father and never once gave in. Minutes after our birth, she even threatened him with a scalpel and then walked miles upon miles to her childhood home while bleeding out vaginally. Then, she and Father went back to prison not three minutes after they finally married, after which she flew them out of prison on a broomstick. _She _maintains, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that she's not a witch, but I don't believe her.

I am one, too. I get visions in her old glass and I can fly the broom and read Liir's mind, though that last could be just a twin thing.

Ari always wishes our mother was hers, to which Ilyana replies that at least _she _was conceived in a 'glamorous relationship' and her father was at _least _a spy. Ilyana herself is the daughter of Glinda's "pompous jackass" (my mother's term) husband Sir Chuffrey. Ari's the earlier product of her mother's affair with a Palace spy whose ass- or nose- my mother kicked on several occasions.

Like I said, she believes in frankness and honesty with children.

But she doesn't necessarily care for it with adults.

"We're coming with you," my father said of Aunt Nessarose's funeral.

"Fine," said Elphaba my mother.

And so it began.


	2. Everything Has Its Price

**A/N: Wow, I updated this slowly. I think I'm going to switch the POV around between Fala and Elphaba. Also, remember Elphaba never visited Nessa like she did in the book. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

Liir and I had never been to Munchkinland before. Well, we technically had, but we couldn't remember it. But I knew it deep in me, like I knew the other world I explored in my dreams.

"I don't want to talk to my father," Mother groaned. She still refers to Frex as her father even though he's not. They have issues. I guess our whole family sort of does. My father, for example, who was married before he had an affair with my mother. Then he and his wife apparently divorced (the mention of which sends Mother muttering "Demon children," under her breath for no real reason) and she then married a man from the village near the castle, but they died of pneumonia soon after. Her sisters seized their chance, and, inspired by some romance novel or something, ran off to the Emerald City, with their nephews and niece in tow.

It's weird.

And then there's Mother's family. My extended family. Her mother, Melena, my grandmother, died in childbirth when my uncle Shell was born. My mother hates him.

He came to visit us once, when I was twelve. He made low comments on my and Liir's existence and our parents and informed my mother that he was working at Southstairs, at which point she threw him out of the house. Which made me laugh, but that's beside the point.

A large, wrought-iron, ivy-covered gate came into view. Sounds of hammering and destruction came from within. Mother began to move faster.

"What the _hell _is going on back there?" she demanded. A traditionally short Munchkin came to the gate.

"Your status no longer grants you any special rights here," he informed her as he opened the gate to let us in.

"Oh, _no longer_? Is that why the last two times I was here I was nearly arrested upon trying to enter the gates?" she wanted to know. The Munchkin fidgeted with his necktie. Mother made an irritated noise and strode past him. Exchanging glances with Liir, I followed, and so did Father and Liir. The Munchkin looked angry, but (wisely) decided against saying anything. Mother led us upstairs.

"Fala, there, Liir, there, we're here, bathroom's down the hall, thank _you_," she said briskly, pulling Father into another room. Liir and I glanced at each other.

"Are they…?" Liir asked.

"Ew. I don't think so," I answered. I was right- a few moments later we heard a slap and Mother stormed out of the room muttering about men and one-track minds and where the hell was she supposed to figure out what was going on?

Liir and I smothered our giggles and went downstairs to explore.

…

Elphaba

I stormed downstairs and scattered a group of Munchkins defacing an arbor outside. All of a sudden, Glinda appeared and grabbed me around the shoulders, sobbing theatrically.

"Glinda, Glinda, calm down," I said. "Really. _Calm down_. Breathe, Glinda, breathe."

She gasped and heaved for a moment before obeying.

"Oh, Elphie, I was there right after. It was _horrible_."

I closed my eyes.

"Can we not?"

"I'm sorry, Elphie…"

"I know. It's not your fault. It's-"

"There's something I have to tell you."

"What?"

"The house that killed her- there was a girl in it. And a dog."

I took a moment to digest this. _A girl…a girl…in a flying house? What the _hell?

"Not a Dog?" I clarified.

"No, definitely not," Glinda assured me. "And she seemed to think it was exceedingly strange when people tried to talk to him, so I don't know if there are Animals, wherever it is she comes from."

"Did she say where that was?" I asked.

"Yes…somewhere called Kansas." Glinda furrowed her brows. "Is that in Quadling Country?"

I groaned. "No, it's not." Something struck me. "Where was she going?"

"I sent her to speak with the Wizard, and I gave her Nessie's enchanted shoes," said Glinda, confusing me completely.

"_Enchanted _shoes?" I asked.

"Oh!" Glinda giggled nervously. "I forgot to tell you. Yes, I enchanted them so she could have enough balance to move around on her own."

"She could…she could _walk_?" I gasped. Glinda looked pleased with herself.

"Yes, it's the best and most difficult piece of sorcery I've ever done," said Glinda happily. "And it worked, well, it worked like a charm."

"Ha," I said dryly, looking over the graffiti on the garden walls. Most of it had to do with the shoes. "You shouldn't have done that, Glinda," I said, ignoring the old swelling of jealousy. _He's not your father. _ "_Look _at this. All of this, it's about the shoes. They've been…either demonized or idolized, or both. They mean more than they are to this entire province- er, country. The Wizard will figure this out, and you _sent _her to him, _with _those shoes?"

Glinda wasn't getting it; she wasn't a Munchkinlander and she wasn't a freedom fighter emotionally invested in rebellion.

"So?" she asked. "So he'll bring Munchkinland back to the rest of Oz, so what?"

I groaned, shook my hair loose from its clips, and ran my fingers through it irritatedly.

"That's not a good thing, Glinda. You know what he's like, you know what he's done, and you sent some defenseless child running into his arms?"

Glinda looked stricken now. "I'm _sorry_, Elphie! I didn't know what else to do! You know they do say he'll give you your heart's desire- if of course you can get in to see him!"

"I know, Glinda, I know," I sighed. "And to be far, this little girl isn't me. She never joined a terrorist group to rebel against him; she's not his illegitimate daughter, he shouldn't have anything against her."

"Maybe he'll help her," Glinda suggested. I looked up into the purpling sky, the twilight I remembered from my early childhood and the summers here later.

"Everything has its price," I said. "His help won't be for free."


	3. Parents and Children

**A/N: Wow, I'm sorry. I kind of forgot about this story for a while. Maybe it was an intentional mind block since I didn't have any ideas at the time…**

**Disclaimer: Not mine.**

Elphaba:

Glinda didn't say anything for a long moment. I scanned the people standing around- the groups of frenzied Munchkinlanders attacking the castle with long-repressed vigor, the sober dignitaries arriving for the funeral, the even more sober clergy members gathered for the same reason. I turned my eyes skyward. _If they say so much as one word about conversion to me, I will lose any faith I have gained, I swear to_- I laughed suddenly at this, making Glinda look at me as though she thought I had gone mad- _to God_. Looking past a group of solemn, praying, priests and a particularly exuberant group of Munchkin desecraters, I spotted him.

"Oh, _damn_," I murmured.

"What is it?" asked Glinda. "Elphie?"

"It's my personal consanguineous demon from the depths of any hell in which you care to believe," I responded. She looked in the direction of my gaze.

"The Wizard? Where?"

"No," I sighed. "Shell."

"Oh…"

"Yes, fortunate woman that I am, I have _two_ such demons."

I was _not _in the mood to deal with him. I groaned. I was being an awful bitch, I supposed. He did, after all, have a right to be here. Nessarose was his sister, too. And she'd been a better one to him than I had, no doubt. I paused to consider that. Well, she'd been _there_, at least.

"Elphie," said Glinda under her breath. "He's coming over here."

Oh, _hell_, she was _right_. Couldn't he just let sleeping dogs lie? _Must _he really force an awkward, false, conversation that would create in me- and in him if he had any shred of integrity left- a strong urge to vomit into the nearest receptacle?

Apparently so.

"Elphaba!" he cried, coming over to me. "And Lady Glinda, how delightful." She gave him her society smile, I gave him my fiercest glare. "You're still angry over my visit two years ago?" he asked.

"You called my children, what was it, 'obscene demon scions?'" I spat. "And what else did you say, that I was a traitorous whore, I think that was it. And didn't you ask Fiyero something to the effect of 'Are you a masochist or just very imaginative?'"

Glinda couldn't help herself at the last one- she snorted quietly. I swiveled my head to give her a dark look.

"Aw, Elphie, you're still mad about that?"

"Words do not suffice to convey the extent of my fury at this moment," I informed him. "If you believe propaganda, or write it, or in fact propagate it, two of which I believe you do and one of which you are too dull to do, you would do quite well to get rather far away from me rather quickly before I turn you into a toad," I said offhandedly. Shell glared at me and backed away, changing his expression to one of contrite remorse and joining a group of somber clergymen mingled with dignitaries.

Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder and jumped out of reflex and whirled around. I breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing that it was only Fiyero.

"Hey," he said. "Will you talk to me?"

"Are you done being a callow, concupiscent…_male_?" I asked.

"If I knew what that second word meant, I'm sure I'd say yes," he said, grinning. I sighed.

"It means lustful."

"I'm not done being such, then, but I'm done doing so overtly."

"Find a synonym for _done_."

"_Finished _doing so overtly."

"Thank you."

His face turned serious.

"Fae. Have you even cried yet?"

"I don't cry."

"You're a liar."

"Don't criticize the manner of my grief and I won't give you any more vocabulary lessons."

"I can't criticize the manner of your grief when you're _not _grieving."

"Stop it, Fiyero," I said more harshly than I wanted to. He was undaunted.

"You _need_ to grieve, Elphaba. I don't want you to follow the path you're on right now…I don't want you closing yourself off to the world. To me."

"I'm _not_."

"You _are_."

"Well, that I don't mean to do." I sighed. "It would certainly be a fitting memorial, though."

Fiyero looked bemused when he pulled away slightly to look me in the eye.

"How do you mean?"

"You'd know better than I, Yero my hero. You were _there_, you were the one who _told _me that she pulled her head into her religion like a turtle into its shell after I left, from heartache and embarrassment." I considered what I had said and gave a false half-laugh that came out sounding like a horrible cackle. "That pun was not intentional, at least not on my part. I cannot, however, say the same for my father."

Fiyero looked genuinely confused now. "Shell, my brother's name," I said. "The point is, Fiyero, that she closed herself off from the world. She had begun the process even before I left. She would have liked very much, I think, to shab the blame for her loneliness off on me, and probably tried, and had I been here for any significant amount of time I would most likely have let her, but now that I think about it she was always leaning that way, off to crazy fundamentalism." I sighed. "I wonder sometimes whether she would have been religious like that even if she _had _arms." I turned to face him. "I mean, do you think we form ourselves to be unlike our parents and, if we have them, our older siblings? Do you think it was my overtly professed atheism- more than likely developed at least somewhat in response to Frex's fervent faith- created that same faith in Nessa, so that she could try to develop an identity separate from mine? I certainly affected the way she was treated among our peers."

"I think that while you're a prime example of striving to be different from your parents, you can't count your terrorism, Fae. You didn't know."

"I can count the second round," I said stubbornly. "And I never said I was, either."

"But you didn't end up soulless and atheistic, did you?" Fiyero asked. I sighed.

"But I wonder…" I muttered as something struck me.

"What?" he asked.

"That change of heart- of soul, to be completely truthful- happened just about the time I discovered that Frex wasn't my father. I think we most definitely have something here, Fiyero. Funny, I'd always imagined the key to my pathologies would be a bit more complex than just wanting to be different from my parents. I hadn't honestly expected to be so _ordinary_."

Fiyero laughed heartily. "You are many, many things, Fae, but ordinary is not one of them."

I sighed and stared off into the distance, watching Fala climb a tree on the other side of the courtyard while Liir worried his fingernails just watching her.

I had been so careless and haphazard in forming my identity, believing somewhat throughout most of it that my skin had done it for me, or that I had no soul so it didn't matter much at all. Thinking about my perceived soulless state often called into question whether I really even had an identity at all.

How, how, how the hell would this affect my children?


	4. Bodily Functions, Baptism, and Titles

**A/N: I'm sorry I have been lost to the forces of darkness…er…school. AP Euro. Don't they realize that we're the kids who _don't _need to define key terms over and over in order to get them? **

**Oh, and note- this is NOT the end. Hopefully that's apparent, but with my concluding sentence I realize there could be confusion. Intrigued? Good. Go read it, and then REVIEW!**

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

Fala:

Our parents were staring at us. It was kind of creepy. I'd seen, from my vantage point in the tree, my uncle walk over to my mother (bad idea) and her (predictable) response of glaring, hissing, and yelling at him until he left.

"Fala," my brother hissed, "Get _down_. You're going to fall, and then you're going to die, and then Mother's going to blame me-"

"Oh, _shut up_, Liir," I replied, leaping out of the tree and making him gasp and cover his eyes until he heard me land, catlike, safely on the ground. "I'm fine, and Mother would _never _do that." I thought a moment. "But she just might disembowel you if you said that to her."

Liir appeared to be considering my point.

"You're right," he admitted, "but you still could have died, and then Father-"

"Urgh!" I stormed away from my incorrigible brother, hurrying over towards my parents. Mother had a dark look on her face, and Father's was concerned. Mother looked towards me and Liir at my heels and something in her eyes changed, softened. She turned her head away and back and the look was gone, leaving her eyes blank.

"Fala, Liir," she said, without any real reprimand in her voice, "It's your aunt's funeral. Don't climb on the trees."

"But _I _wasn't-" protested Liir. Mother held up her hand.

"Please," she said. "Just- don't."

It hit me that her weary voice and dull, lifeless words mirrored the reactions of Glinda and the Arjiki village mothers to their children's escapades. Our mother was never like that. She always _did _care whether or not her scoldings were fair, she always listened to both sides of the story, _always_, and she rarely scolded us for things like tree climbing, even at funerals, anyway. And when she did scold, it was nothing like this…this…absentness. She scolded fiercely and thoroughly, the way she did everything, and once she was finished the offender never even thought of doing it again. That was why, soon after we returned to Kiamo Ko, Father gladly handed over all matters of justice to her and once a week she held court in her favorite haunt, the huge, turret-like study.

At first, the villagers resented and were wary of us, not solely because of Mother's and my skin but because Mother had caused their prince to break, apparently, dozens of customs. But as she made an effort to learn their dialogue and ancient laws, and as they realized her rulings were always fair and her dressing downs a more effective deterrent of crime than their old tortures and executions, she won their respect and became better-loved even than Fiyero. On the occasion that "Lady Queen Elphaba," -as Liir, Father, and I knew the villagers called her as subversively as the Munchkinlanders had called Aunt Nessarose the Wicked Witch of the East, though had Mother found out her reaction would have been far more vehement- walked through the town, she drew waves, cheers, and a crowd of children following behind, all of which merely made her laugh genuinely and the tell everyone, a bit more mildly than usual, to please go back to what they were doing and leave her to do the same because obsequiousness made her sick to her stomach. At first, this shocked the adults but then they began to realize that this was merely their new queen's way and began to do as she had said and lessen their response, though not so far as she would have liked. The children, however, listened not at all and continued following her as though she were the Pied Piper of the Gillikinese fairy tale. Speaking of the Gillikinese, about half the children believed that Glinda was the Fairy Queen Lurline, and so whenever she visited they followed even more voraciously and lost their noisy rowdiness to an awed reverence, staring at Glinda with eyes wide (which she loved), until Elphaba told them to shoo, Glinda was just a person and she peed just like everyone else, and her pee didn't give anyone souls, either. When Glinda told the story in a rather mortified voice later, around the dinner table, Fiyero remarked that at least she hadn't said _piss_ to the five-year-old-and-under population of the village. Elphaba had glared, but not angrily, and Ariana, Liir, and I, ages eight and nine, had laughed hysterically at our father both for swearing and mentioning bodily functions. Illyana, an aghast look on her face, stared at us, and Glinda, hiding laughter, set her lips primly and made a _moue _of distaste.

But now…Mother was standing there, eyes dull, and Father was staring at her with an awful worried look written across his face.

Then, she smiled vaguely at something in her head, and, embarrassing Liir and I, gripped Father in her arms and kissed him.

And there they stayed for a good long time.


	5. Nightmare

**A/N: Yay, an update from me! It'd have been up sooner but I'm on vacation and internet access is spotty at best. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. Written under the influence of _The Hunchback of Notre Dame _music. **

_Fiyero: _

The night after Nessarose's funeral, I awoke to find Elphaba's place beside me empty and neatly made despite my slumbering form. I leaned over the side of the bed and looked at the pocketwatch hanging out of my pants pocket on the floor where the pants had evidently been thrown last night when…well…ahem. All right then. It was two o'clock in the morning. I sat up instantly in bed, disoriented, and looked around trying not to panic until I located Elphaba, sitting drawn up so tightly against the window that she was barely distinguishable from the shadows. Suddenly, a ray of moonlight starkly illuminated her face and the crystalline tear trickling down her face.

"Fae?" I asked groggily, kicking off the blankets and standing beside the bed. "What's wrong?"

Hastily, she brushed the tear away from her face. "N-nothing," she lied too quickly.

"Fae."

She hid her face.

"The nightmares are back," she said finally, bluntly. I gaped at her She hadn't dreamed about what had happened that night she was nineteen in years. But I could remember the dreams vividly. She'd shake and sweat and cry out painfully, and I couldn't bring myself to imagine what she was going through trapped in the prison of her own memories.

"Oh, Elphaba," was all I could think to say. She stood, shaking slightly but her face looking as if she were determined to control it. Silently, I opened my arms. She stepped into them and I enfolded her, and she held onto me as if I were her lifeline, what she had learned to do during her nightmares. She had had to teach herself to rely on anyone other than herself. Before, she had refused adamantly to be touched and cried out that she was not worthy of me and I should go away, making me plead with her, making her shake more violently and turn away. That was before I knew, and even a few times after. But the night she had finally let me hold her after one of her terrors, she had shook and cried and I had cried just as much, with her, at this final bond of trust she had at last brought herself to forge.

Now, she grabbed to me tighter, and I picked her up and carried her into bed, cradling her to me, and holding her against me once we were warm under the covers and her paroxysms had stopped.

"You're safe," I whispered to her, knowing that tomorrow she would go to enormous lengths to be braver and more independent (and more hostile) than usual, and might even avoid me for the better part of the day. "We're all safe. He promised. Nothing will ever hurt us again."

She looked up at me with haunted yet startlingly clear hazel eyes.

"I hope, _I _pray, you're right," she said, "but I _think_ you're wrong."

…

_Elphaba: _

He was wrong. Just like before, I was sadly, horribly, right. And I should have known, should have predicted, how it would happen.

Apparently, the Wizard arrived around the time we were talking and demanded to speak to me _immediately _about my intentions toward the Eminency and Munchkinland's status as a separate state. And it had to be now, no waiting the few hours until morning like a normal person, say one who didn't think he was all but Lurlina herself.

We had just fallen back to sleep after my nightmare began. Gale Forcers stormed into the room and pulled me out of bed.

"What the _hell_ is this?" I demanded. "I have done _nothing!_"

"His Ozness wants to speak with you about the Eminency," one of them said.

"About the- and _this _is the way he calls meetings with his fellow rulers!" I demanded incredulously.

"When they're terrorist witches," one of them answered. I slapped him hard across the face.

"How dare you. I rule this state, as of right now. Go back to his motherfucking Ozness-" I cackled briefly at the truthfulness of that epithet when it came from my lips- "and tell him that, and that its your damn fault I've just reinstated the Eminency. Get the hell out of my room and I'll see him, with my husband, the Ruling Prince of the Arjikis, when we are dressed. _NOW GET OUT!_" I roared.

I was quite satisfyingly obeyed.

That satisfaction, however, dissipated soon after Fiyero and I were led into one of the conference rooms of my own ancestral home. The Wizard and an unfamiliar man, about my own height of five feet eight inches, sat at a table. Like guilty defendants, Fiyero and I had cleverly been made to stand in front of them at their high table, so that they looked down at us. Instantly I compensated, throwing my head back defiantly so that I could glare nonetheless down my nose at them.

"You have called me out of my bed at two o'clock in the morning to have a discussion that could and should have waited for daylight and the hours of ordinary, honest government matters, _Father_, and furthermore you sent your soldiers stomping into our rooms to arrest us like dissenters in the night, so you'd better have a damn good reason for it," I began. The little man obviously shared in our secret or was a brilliant actor, since he didn't flinch when I called the Wizard my father.

"Elphaba," he said jovially.

"Kindly address me as your Eminence," I replied coldly with as much haughtiness as I could muster.

"That is what we've called you here to discuss, _Elphaba_," he said, pointedly ignoring my demand.

"Well, since you so asked so rudely, I now fully intend to retain the position of Eminence or at least keep it in my family, and I also fully intend to maintain Munchkinland's current status as a state separate from Oz, due fully to your refusal to refer to me by my rightful title," I inform him. "In short, once again, you've stuck this thorn in your own side."

He turned red but his voice didn't lose its level quality.

"I had expected as much. Well then, Miss Elphaba, may I introduce to you my Minister of Interrogation, Lord Master Devyn." Devyn smiled a leering smile at us and a shudder went down my spine. _God, I hate that man_. Suddenly, I felt someone grabbing my hands in a vise grip behind my back. I whirled to see a Gale Forcer holding me, and one holding Fiyero as well.

"What the hell are you doing?" I yelled.

"Arresting you for sedition, treason, and terrorism," my blood father replied calmly. Devyn's sneer grew wider.

"You promised, you bastard!" I screamed at him.

"You should have known better-" he began, but I wouldn't let him. Struggling against my apprehender, I continued to scream.

"No! Father to daughter, you promised me. You _swore_! Damn you! Damn you to hell for this!" I shrieked as we were dragged away.

_Fala_:

My grandfather roused Liir and I in the middle of the night, shaking us awake hurriedly.

"What is it?" I asked, awake faster than Liir as usual and handling the unusual, ominous circumstances with my mother's aplomb.

"Your parents," my grandfather gasped… "the Wizard…he took them…"

"_Again_?" groaned my uncle, walking into the doorway from the hall where he'd evidently heard us.

"Yes, Shell, again," my grandfather said irritably, "so no matter your personal feelings toward your sister right now, get ready and go to the Emerald City. Make yourself useful and plead for their release there."

"But, Father-" Grandfather leveled him with a glare more ferocious than any I'd ever seen him wear before- and for Mother's sake!- and Shell sighed. "Yes, Father," he said and disappeared.

"Good!" yelled Frex after him. Almost to himself, he muttered, "by the Unnamed God, I _will not _lose another daughter!"

_Devyn_:

The witch is different than I had expected. I had expected a cackling, haglike woman, hideous and high-pitched and altogether rather ridiculous. But the witch- she was graceful and proud, and the moonlight playing in her raven hair nearly drove me to distraction. But no, she is disgusting to me. She is a traitor, not only to her country but to her own father. She must be destroyed. Not killed, shattered internally. Broken. She has a weakness somewhere in that queenly armor, and mark me, I shall find it. No matter how long it takes.


	6. Weakness

**A/N: Another update! Wheeeeeeee. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine**

_Fala: _

Liir was freaking out and Grandfather wasn't much better. I was frayed down to my last nerve with the pair of them, and it didn't help that my own latent memories were resurfacing.

_Mommy bursting in, gathering me up to her. The bruise blooming on her cheek, her bones hard through the fabric of her black shift. Her hair, long, loose, tangled, and a salty tear falling from her face to mine. _

_Voices. Loud, angry voices. Mommy's, low and harsh, next to my ear. Her heart beats fast against mine. Another voice. A man. Not like Daddy. Angry. He hates Mommy, hates me. Daddy is there, suddenly. Angry. Mommy puts me down, and the angry voices get louder. Pushing, shoving. The awful man has said something. I can feel waves of hatred and pain emanating from Mommy and Daddy…_

Like right now. I could feel my mother. My father. I could feel them, hear them. Mother lied. I was a witch. She was a witch. I had her power.

_Mommy. Come back. Please. _

_Elphaba: _

He knew my weaknesses, that Minister of Torture did.

Fiyero and I were left alone on our dismal wagon ride to the City. When we arrived at Southstairs, they threw us into a tiny, windowless cell. It was damp as hell. As usual, a pile of molding straw and a dirty chamber pot were the only objects in it- except two sets of ankle and wrist manacles on the walls.

"Oh, sweet Oz," I murmured under my breath. I could already tell that this round of imprisonment was going to be worse than any of the others. I was older, I hadn't trained in fourteen years, and this cell was more dank and those manacles did not bode well at _all_. I clutched Fiyero's hand tightly as the Minister of Bastardliness shoved us into the cell- and followed us, with a trio of Gale Forcers. The three of them grabbed Fiyero and yanked him away. The Great Bastard himself grabbed me and shoved me against the wall.

"Glad to see you have such faith in your prison and your elite guards that you need to manacle a one-twenty pound, five-foot eight woman to the wall."

"You are a witch, Miss Thropp. You have escaped this otherwise impregnable prison not once, but twice. Do not try to manipulate me into underestimating you."

"Speaking of escaping, since you're new around here, I'll fill you in on how this little routine goes. You capture us, we engage in witty banter, we arrive at Southstairs and have some more witty banter, there's some torture and defiant yet still witty banter, and then we try to engage in some witty banter with the guards but as they're too stupid I end up just messing with their minds, and then you or my father comes back in here to gloat, we engage in witty banter, you leave, we escape, and we yell something witty behind us as we leave. Any questions?"

Minister Bastard glared at me.

"You won't be so flip when I'm done with you, Miss Elphaba," he said, fastening the manacle around my left leg, then my right.

"That's _Your Eminence_, thank you," I spat haughtily back at him. He ignored me.

"I know your weaknesses," he went on, straightening.

"I have no weaknesses," I lied fiercely.

"Oh, really?" he asked. Suddenly, he pressed himself along the length of my body. Every cell in me screamed to get away. I shivered involuntarily and fought him unsuccessfully, chained as I was. He laughed at my efforts and pulled back, but before he fully did, he grabbed my right breast with his hand and squeezed it, digging in with his fingernails.

_Fucking **bastard**_.

I kneed him in the balls.

They really ought to shorten the chains on their leg manacles.


	7. Paying the Price

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

_Elphaba: _

Like I said, he knew. He knew how to press my buttons. He knew I couldn't stand this enforced helplessness.

He knew what had happened to me.

He had to know. Disgusting slimy bastard. I was beginning to think that perhaps that whole terrible ordeal had been…orchestrated by the Wizard. But that was ridiculous, wasn't it? I had done nothing then. _Except join the Resistance that afternoon_.

But…

Pinned up here to the wall, gagged (I had called that bastard a bastard and he'd ordered me silenced) I had nothing to do but let my thoughts race like pent-up lab rats through the labyrinth of my mind. I was getting more and more paranoid, and feeling more and more like Madame Morrible had been right all those years ago, Like I was a pawn in her game.

Where was that hideous hell-cat, anyway? I would kill her if I saw her. I _would_.

"Fae," Fiyero tried to comfort me. "Fae, please. Look at me."

But I wouldn't, not when all I could do was nod or shake my head like a petulant child and he could speak. Not when I was more than helpless, when I was voiceless.

_…cauterize the part of the brain that controls language…_

_-No- _

_…eliminate the notion of pain…_

_-No!- _

_…and…pain itself…_

_-NO!- _

I wanted to feel, needed to feel!

I kicked, scratched, yelled, beat myself against the wall, ignoring Fiyero's panicked yelling, anything to get free or at least to feel something besides this pervading numbness.

The guards came running, somehow.

"See?" the Minister of Bastardliness crowed. "She _is _insane!"

"What?" cried Fiyero. "In here, who-"

The Minister of Being Fucked-Up continued over his protestations.

"She is insane and she is an unnatural woman," he went on.

"Oh, fuck _off_," I instructed him. "If I'm so _fucking _unnatural, then why do I have a husband and two children?"

"You're a woman, and anyone can conceive and give birth," he continued, "but you are _not natural_."

I regarded my own skin. "Thanks for the newsflash, O Brilliant One," I responded sarcastically. I was ignored.

"Take her to the asylum," he said. Obediently, a soldier began undoing my leg manacles.

Big mistake.

Using all my strength, I swung my legs to the left, up against the wall, pushed off, and took out two soldiers with my swing. Two more, however, grabbed my legs as another undid my wrist manacles. I fell on them like a hell-cat myself, twisting and clawing and screaming bloody murder.

"Shut her up, somehow, one of you!" screamed the Minister as Fiyero tried to reason with him.

"I love you!" I screamed to him suddenly, over the din, and heard him answer in kind, just before I felt cold metal connect, hard, with the back of my head.

And then the blackness was all I knew.

_Fala: _

The night after my mother was taken, her pain, and my father's reached new heights. I woke up screaming. I looked over at my brother. Liir, the great dolt, was still asleep. I shook him awake.

"Enh- Fala- whaddya want?' he mumbled groggily, propping himself up, dark hair mussed like it had been perpetually when we were small. Mother hadn't exactly been obsessed with our having neat hair.

"I've decided something, Liir," I said firmly. "I can't just sit here. I-I can feel their pain, it's bad, Liir, really bad. We need to rescue them."

I expected him to demur, to plead, to call Grandfather, to freak out. I underestimated him.

"Well, all right," he said, and we began to prepare.

_Elphaba: _

When I woke up, I was chained, ankles to wrists, in the fetal position. I was naked and lying on the floor. I screamed and screamed and screamed, but no one came. Eventually, I broke down crying.

I don't know how long it was. Weeks. A month. A guard would shove food into my mouth once a day. It was silent. I was dirty and covered in my own waste. I wanted to die. If I wasn't crazy already, much more of this and I sure as hell would be.

Then he came in.

"Hello, Miss Elphaba," he said, circling me.

"What do you want from me?" I spat.

"To evaluate you. To see if you've been cured."

"Cured?" I laughed. "Cured. Cured. _This place is a fucking breeding ground of insanity_."

"I will judge whether or not you've been cured by whether or not you can make reasonable choices."

"Rather subjective standard, coming from you."

"You're awfully proud for someone in your position."

"I'm only in this position because you don't like the fact that standing I'm taller than you."

I'd struck a nerve; the way his steps suddenly became more like stomps told me that without question.

"Hell, I'm probably better fucking endowed than you, too, and I'm a _woman_."

"That's it, you little bitch," he hissed, kicking me in the back. I grunted with pain but made no other concession. "You want out of here or do want to die like this? You want me to go get your daughter and do to her what's been done to you? Hell, yeah, I know. _Your father did it_."

"Don't you touch her!" I shrieked, and began trying vainly to release myself.

He leaned down close to me.

"You'll have to beg," he whispered.

"You're not content with this humiliation?"

"You're not humiliated. Damn it, beg!"

I knew I had to. For Fala's sake. Tears welled up in my eyes.

"Please," I said softly, "please. Don't hurt her. Please. She hasn't done anything wrong! Just leave her alone. Just let me go back to my husband. I'm not insane. Go ahead and torture me, punish me, whatever you want, just leave her alone. Just let me go back to prison."

"You're not begging. Beg!"

A sob wrenched in my throat. He kicked me again.

"Please, _sir_, please, you have total power over me. You can destroy me-"

I gritted my teeth, hard. _Elphaba. Do this so you can fight another day. Give in so you can come back and stab him in the heart and watch him bleed all over the floor. Do this for Fala, for Liir, for Fiyero_. _Just say it, say it and you will win_ _in the end. Courage, Elphaba, just a little longer_.

"I am nothing," I finished. "I beg you, sir, please leave my daughter and son alone. Please let me return to my husband."

Spent, I began to cry quietly into my knees.

"Very well, whore," he said, satisfied. "I'll bring you back to Southstairs."


	8. Paying it Back

**A/N: Not my fault, school's fault. On the plus side, I got to write an essay about Wicked and I'm green with the official Broadway makeup, which, ironically, you add water to to get it to go on. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

_Fala_:

We walked for two weeks. The lack of feeling I got from Mother and Father was disturbing: either they were dead, which was- unthinkable- or their pain had become so constant it no longer pulsated. It never stopped, not for one moment, day or night.

Liir was whining, as usual, about his fatigue and I was, as usual, ignoring him, when we finally came upon the east gate of the city.

"We made it!" I exclaimed, taking a running step towards the gate only to find myself yanked back by Liir.

"Yeah, Fala, and how d'you think the guards are going to like the Wicked Witch of the West sauntering right into the city?"

"But I'm not-"

"A green skin is all they'll see."

"But don't they know Mother's-"

"And _how _many times has she escaped?"

I grudgingly sighed. "So who's going to rescue them? _You_?"

Liir visibly puffed up. I groaned.

"Just put the damn cloak on, then, Fala," he growled, throwing it unceremoniously over my head. When I had managed to extricate myself from it and put it on normally, I followed him hurriedly up the path to where the gates stood, glinting, magnificently ominous, shining in the sun.

_Elphaba_:

There was nothing more that they could do to me. Nothing.

They had let Fiyero off of the wall. The had at least let me clean myself, and so, bruised and tangled and half-beaten, I collapsed into his arms.

"I'm ready," I murmured in his ear, "to let you see me at my most vulnerable, now. I won't hide from you anymore, not in the night, not in the daylight, never."

He recognized it as a mangled gift. "Thank you," he whispered back.

"Not so fast." The Bastard was still there, standing in the cell's doorway, accompanied by his ever present coterie of guards.

"Go away, Devyn. There's nothing left for you to do to me. You can't hurt me anymore," I stated calmly.

"Oh really?" he asked, smiling evilly, making me physically ill. But I refused to let even a flicker of fear show on my face.

And then he moved. And They were there.

_No. No. No. No. No. No. _

I curled in tighter to Fiyero, clutching him like I would fall down without his presence, I heard his voice but I couldn't understand what he was saying, and then I was being torn away and there was yelling, Fiyero reaching out, and someone was keening a high, inhuman wail- me, me, my voice, I was screaming and I couldn't stop, didn't mean to, and They were there, hands on me, _nononononononononononono_, and then.

A vast explosion of white-hot light, ricocheting around the room, and They were _away_, Devyn was _away_, the guards were _away_, slammed up against walls and doors and out into the hallway, stunned. The white light swirled around Fiyero and me in a great blinding vortex. It parted just before the cell door, a clear signal breaking through the fog of my beleaguered mind. I grabbed Fiyero's hand and pulled him with me, and we were out the door and into the great maze of Southstairs.


	9. Family Bonding

_Fala: _

"Great."

"Yeah."

Liir and I stood staring at the impenetrable walls of Southstairs.

"When they say Oz's most impregnable prison…" Liir began.

"They mean it, you dolt! You thought what, they left the damn doors open?"

"Well…Mother and Dad sure act like they do!"

I sighed at my brother's logic. "Yes, but…it's Mother."

"Good point," Liir conceded. "So…how are we getting in?"

I grinned as a plan began to form out of the fragmented tendrils in my mind.

"Getting in will be the easy part. It's getting out I'm worried about."

"Wha-?" asked Liir. I grabbed his hand and focused all my strength inward and upward. _Fly, _I thought, _fly! _

I heard Liir gasp and opened my eyes. We were flying, really flying!

I threw off the hood of the cloak and smiled brilliantly at the gaping faces below us.

"You thought mere walls could hold me? Have they ever done so before?" I bellowed, channeling my mother's hauteur. "Insolent fools! I-" I clutched my stomach and, in a very convincing faint, plummeted to the ground, slowing our fall just slightly before we hit the ground, making sure the cloak obscured both of our faces.

The guards had no idea they'd captured not the Wicked Witch of the West and her paramour but a pair of gangly, freckled (green or not) fourteen-year-olds until we were already inside the processing room.

_Stay in a faint_, I thought hard to Liir. If they think we're unconscious they'll be far less careful.

**_Don't worry, I have no intention of moving_**, thought Liir. **_How the hell did you do that? _**

_I don't know, but it's amazing. _

"Sweet Oz, Mav, they're kids!"

One of them scraped his finger against my arm. I worked hard to remain limp.

"She's really green, too, ain't she!"

"D'you think they're _her _kids?"

"The Witch's? I've never heard tell of another flyin' green girl. 'ave you?"

"Does this mean she's still in custody?"

"No…they've escaped. She did some sort of spell and they ran off, but the new Minister o' Interrogation said they haven't left the building yet."

I felt my heart leap. _They're here! And free! _

"Speakin o' which, we're needed to protect the exits. We ken leave 'em here, don't you reckon? Two passed out kids won't get far down here, 'specially not when one of 'em's got skin _that _color."

"Aye, leave 'em."

We heard the door slam shut and the lock click, but that didn't bother me. I sat up triumphantly, a phoenix rising from the ashes.

"Yes!"

_Elphaba: _

"Yes!" I crowed triumphantly as soon as we emerged out of a backdoor, the lock of which I finally managed to pick using the same magic I could sometimes here Fiyero's or the twins' thoughts with. I kissed Fiyero, long and hard and deep, jolting us both from the ends of each individual hair to the soles of our feet, rooting us to the ground.

"Can you believe it? We escaped again!" I said, words bubbling rapidly from my lips to push away the threat of silence. "We really do make a habit of it-"

"Fae," said Fiyero quietly.

"What?" I asked, cringing inwardly at the irritating, falsely chipper tone of my own voice.

"_Stop it_," he sounded pained.

"What?"

"Stop acting like everything's fine, because it's _not fine_. You are _not fine_. You _promised_. You promised to let me see you-"

"Can we do this somewhere else, Fiyero?"

"_No_, Elphaba, we can't. You peel back your layers, but you keep building on more. You've never let me see you with all your defenses down, and that's not how you act in a marriage-"

"What do you know about how to act in a marriage?" I spat, regretting each word as it came out of my mouth. "I-I'm sorry. I didn't mean-"

"No…you're right." He sighed and hit the wall with the flat of his hand. "I don't know how. We're not very good at this, after fourteen years, are we?"

I laughed.

"No. _I'm _not. But Fiyero, I can be happy, can't I? I'm not broken, Fiyero, not anymore. Not now, never again. I don't have to be, all right? I _survived_, I _got over it_. You saved me, but I am _all right now_."

"Then why are you still waking up shaking at night, Fae? Why do you flinch when I- when anyone- touches you from behind? Why do I see you sitting by the window at night with your eyes empty?"

"I have nightmares, so what? I'm jumpy. I have a right to be, I've been chased by soldiers and angry mobs, and besides, I've never been good with being touched. I think a lot!"

"That's not it."

"Don't assume everything is a defense mechanism, Fiyero, it's not!"

He studied me for a moment, then embraced me.

"Let's go get our children before my father scars them for life," I said.

"Speaking of Frex and child-rearing, are you ever going to tell him he's not your father?"

"Oh, Fiyero, I don't know," I said. "Any day from age twelve to age twenty-two, I'd have leapt at the chance to wound him, to make the atonement he forced me to suffer to absolve himself meaningless. But then- when we went back there, both times years ago and now- he acted like a _father_. He is kind to our children. He _is _my father, you know- he misguidedly shaped me, but shaped me nonetheless. And before Nessa and Mama and Quadling Country, when I was very small- he loved me then, and he knew how far better than he did later, after Turtle Heart died and Nessa was born more broken than I, and then later, after he fell into his obsessions and Mama died-"

I turned to Fiyero, terror in my eyes. "Oh, sweet Oz, I'm just like them, aren't I? If you had died that night, what do you think I'd have done? Do you think I could have cared for Fala and Liir? I was already consumed by obsession, just like Frex! I'm like them both, Frex and the Wizard. They're both consumed. Melena, too, by her pinlobble leaves…oh, sweet Lurline, I'm just like them!"

"No, Elphie, Fae, no, you're not! You've broken free. Calm down, my heart, breathe. You're free of your obsession- you control it, it doesn't control you. I didn't die. I'm here, right here. You aren't your parents, any of them. You're you, Elphaba-Fabala-Elphie-Fae, and no one else, ever, and we are going to go to Munchkinland and retrieve our beloved twins and go back to Kiamo Ko and repeat that exercise of making love in every single room in that castle, without being seen by Fala and Liir-"

I blushed and laughed and hushed him when I heard the heralds blow to denote an announcement.

"Citizens of Oz," came Devyn's voice. I was rather surprised that the Bastard had managed to walk to the podium, given where I'd directed a good lot of that energy I'd released.

"We have reapprehended the green Wicked Witch of the West and her companion, an unidentified Vinkusian male of her same age."

"What?" Fiyero gasped beside me. I squeezed his hand. This must be a trick, a piece of propaganda to satisfy the city.

But…why not give Fiyero's status as king, at least? Further strengthen public opinion against the Vinkusian rebels, such as we were?

Why add that bit about the age?

_An unidentified Vinkusian male of her same age. _

_The green Wicked Witch of the West…_

"Oh, my God," I whispered. "Oh, sweet Lurline…"

"What?" Fiyero whispered in a terror-stricken voice.

"They have Fala and Liir."


	10. Honor

**A/N: Um…er…right, so…NO TOMATOES, PLEASE! AP Euro is a bad, bad, thing. An evil thing. It _eats _people. So does Chemistry. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine**

_Fala: _

"Double-crossing wench."

Liir and I slumped back down as soon as we heard voices outside the door.

"She swore she wouldn't-" the same harsh voice continued. Another male voice, less antagonistic, answered.

"You debased her, Devyn. You didn't really think she was going to hold herself to that, especially after what you did next? I did _not _give you permission to do that. I am _not _at all pleased that you did."

The first voice, whinier than before: "You _said _I was to do whatever it-"

"That was before, you idiot!"

"Before what?"

"Before I knew she was my daughter!"

Liir and I opened our eyes and exchanged shocked glances.

_The Wizard of Oz is standing outside that door? This is not good. _

"I expect you won't want me to fulfill my promise of what I was going to do to the girl, then," the other man whined.

I shuddered involuntarily.

"_No_, you are _not_."

The door opened and our eyes snapped shut. I could hear them walking around me. Their footsteps- the one man's grumpy stomps, the Wizard's steadier tread.

The other man was standing near me. I struggled not to wince or shudder. _Still. Still. Still._

"Step the hell away from my daughter, you fucking bastard, or I swear to any God you care to name I'll kill you where you stand!"

_Mother_.

_Elphaba_:

He was going to die, and he was going to suffer. I had never felt more the witch they called me in my life than I did in that moment, watching him stand over my daughter, hand poised over her unconscious body, ready to do God knows what.

I strode towards him, Fiyero beside me, and he was pinned against the wall, the air itself doing my hand's will, before I even got close enough to clasp my fingers around his throat.

"You incredible…you pathetic, horrible, screwed-up…" There were no words, really. I physically grabbed his neck and slammed his head hard into the wall, then kicked him once again in the testicles. I turned to Fiyero.

"Do what you will."

"Why, thank you."

"You're very welcome."

As Fiyero proceeded to beat Devyn bloody, I turned to my father and said words I had never believed I would say.

"Thank you."

"Wha- what?"

"I heard you. Thank you for not letting him hurt Fala."

"Oh- all right."

"This doesn't mean I won't kill you if I get the chance."

"Nor I, you."

"Good."

"Good."

"Shall we watch?"

"I really can't allow him to _kill _my Minister of Interrogations, you know," the Wizard said hesitantly.

"Why not?"

"It would set a bad precedent."

"_He _sets a bad precedent."

The Wizard ignored this and watched the beating for a moment. "I suppose you're accustomed to this sort of entertainment, then," I said lightly. He didn't glare at me, as I'd expected, but merely smiled faintly and murmured his assent.

"Fiyero," I called finally, "Stop."

"Do I have to?"

"Yes, we're under orders not to actually kill him."

"Since when do you follow orders?"

"I swore on my quite debatable honor."

He sighed and stepped away from Devyn, whose face was dripping blood. "Fine."

I turned back to the Wizard.

"I'm assuming you'll let us go?"

He gave me that same faint smile. "We're even this time, I suppose."

"Thank you." I moved closer to the tables on which my children lay. "Fala, Liir," I called. "I know you're not unconscious. Get up. Now. We're going."

They obeyed and followed me and Fiyero out of the room and through a back exit.

"How does she _do _that?" I heard Liir whisper from behind me. I grinned.

Some parental secrets are better left unsaid.


	11. Traveling

"I don't understand you and him," said Fiyero as we left the City under cover of darkness. He gestured back towards the Wizard's palace.

"Oh, Yero, neither do I." I sighed. "He _is _evil, I believe he is, I _know _he is- I couldn't have done anything I have if I didn't- but at the same time, no one is unequivocally evil, or unequivocally good. It's a matter of actions, really, of the sum of them, or that's how we determine good and evil, at any rate. But releasing us, keeping that bastard away from Fala, was good- but he'd captured us in the first place, he caused it, and besides, the four of us are _nothing _compared to all the others he's hurt, killed…" Fiyero tightened his arm around my waist.

"It's a better philosophy than 'real or realer people,'" he said, recalling our old conversation as if it had been just yesterday instead of over fourteen years before. I whacked him lightly on the back of the head.

"It istrue, to an extent."

"Oh, no, not again."

"It _is_," I insisted. "In a way. Take my father-"

"Which one?"

"That one," I said, waving my hand in the direction of the City. "If he were to die, how many would that save? That is the equation of the worth of a life at its most extreme, at its most fundamental, Fiyero."

"If I didn't know you," he said slowly, "That- coldness- would frighten me, _Elphaba_." He said my name pointedly, instead of Fae.

"But it is true, isn't it?" I pressed on. "And, Yero, who would you save between a man and a child on the street? Who has done more evil- or more good? Who has a family?"

"But what of all the good the child could do?"

"What of all the evil?" I countered. "We don't know, do we, so we guess, and we hope, and we grope blindly towards an unknown outcome-"

"Mother, stop it, stop it," Liir said suddenly, from behind us. "I don't want to listen to this anymore."

"Then-" I began, but Fala stole the words from my tongue.

"Then close your ears!"

Fiyero and Liir exchanged looks.

_"What?!"_ Fala and I asked at the same moment. The pair of them laughed, and each got hit on the head, twice.

"Do we even know where we're going?" Liir asked a few minutes later.

"We'd best go back to Munchkinland and disappoint my brother with the news that we're still alive," I said.

"Mm," affirmed Fiyero, "And we can get a carriage or a wagon or something."

"Specific," I commented.

"Shut up."

"Make me."

"Oh, aren't we mature today?"

"There is no _we_. That patronizing _we _is obnoxious."

"Stop acting like a two-year old."

"I've never acted like a two-year old."

"At some point even you-"

"No."

"But everyone-"

"No."

"But-"

"No."

Fiyero gave up and pulled me tightly to him for a kiss.

"Ew, gross," said Liir.

"Shut up," said Fala, elbowing him.

…

Children, I have learned, are not at all fun to travel with, and exhausted adolescents are even less so.

"Are we there yet?"

"How much farther?"

"Why are we going to Munchkinland?"

"Why does Grandfather have to live in Munchkinland?"

"Why were we even in Munchkinland?"

"I hate Munchkinland."

"I hate our dead aunt."

"Can we find something to eat?"

This was going to be a long trip.


	12. Old Friends

**A/N: I know, I know! It's been forever…I kind of forgot this story existed…I'm really, really sorry…goes into hiding lest tomatoes start flying **

**Disclaimer: Not mine**

_Fala_:

My legs ached. I had walked this road not three days before, and to turn around and walk the same thousands of steps in reverse order was too much to be borne, nearly. Except that it wasn't, it couldn't be, for it had to be done, and complaining would, with my mother, inevitably make conditions worse. Also, it took my mind off of things. Like Devyn. And, apparently, my mother really could read minds, for at that moment she turned around and reached out an arm for me.

"No one is completely good or evil," she repeated quietly, "And terrible things happen to everyone." I lay my head on her shoulder, and she stopped walking and just stood, embracing me, until Father and Liir noticed that it was suspiciously quiet and waited for us to catch up.

_Elphaba_:

"You're going soft," Fiyero whispered in my ear, making me jump.

"For Kumbricia's sake," I said irritably, and tried to walk faster.

"You are."

I glanced back at Fala and Liir, who looked near asleep on their feet. They weren't listening.

"She's been through a lot, they both have."

"So have you."

"I'm used to it, I don't care."

"You _do _care, Fae. This time was…different."

I stared down at my boots.

"I thought we weren't going to discuss this," I said quietly.

"You never said that. I know _I _never said that."

"I'm saying it now, Fiyero. _Please_. I don't want to talk about it. I _won't_."

He gave me a concerned look and I was torn with the conflicting desire to punch him and to embrace him, simultaneously.

"You can't just pretend it didn't happen, you know," he said.

"Yes, I can. I'm very good at it."

"Elphaba-"

I took off running, overwhelmed by the need to be away from everyone, to be away from stifling well-meaning, from love, to be self-contained as I had before. I took two curves rapidly and nearly tripped over a tree branch lying in my way- detritus from the tornado, how long ago had _that_ been? It seemed like years. Fiyero had said it was mere weeks. I wondered vaguely what had happened to the girl and her dog, the ones Glinda had said were in the house that killed my sister. I wondered it in a strange, out of consciousness moment of calm before I came crashing back to myself. I looked around, making certain the others were out of sight and inaudible, before I collapsed on a fallen log off the side of the road, pulling my knees up to my chest and screaming into them. I don't know how long I sat there with my face pressed painfully into my bony kneecaps before I felt something touch my back. I stiffened, ready to knock whoever it was flat on his back.

"Don't," he said, "It's just-" I couldn't hear what he said, but I recognized the voice. I breathed in and opened my eyes.

It wasn't Fiyero, as I had thought in my odd and muffled state. It was Boq. My mouth dropped open, shocked.

"Miss Elphie?" he asked, clearly as surprised as I was. "Miss Elphaba Thropp?"

"Just Elphaba, please, Boq," I said as I had what felt like a thousand years ago.

"But Elphaba- Elphaba, my Oz! No one's heard anything from you since your second year at Shiz!"

"Well, that's not strictly true," I felt the need to correct him, the need to be the obnoxiously particular and sarcastic college girl he had known. "I'm reasonably certain that there are beings around who _have _heard me. Such as these trees, you know. Or, if you mean sentient beings, there are of course the people and Animals on the street, they've heard me cursing at hackneys, and I _have _spoken to others these nineteen years, Boq-"

"That isn't what I meant, Miss Elphaba." As he had nearly twenty years ago, he was retreating into polite formality to punish me.

"Oh, not this again, Boq. I'm sorry, I'll tell you. It's true that people have heard of me. Fiyero, for one. Glinda."

"But not Miss Nessarose? She wanted your head on a platter after you left, I think."

"Undoubtedly. But she's dead, so she shan't get it in this life, and I hope to escape her in the next by continued disbelief in its existence."

Boq opened his mouth, I think to chastise me for my lack of faith and for my apparent indifference to Nessie's death, when we heard Fiyero and the children shouting from around a bend in the path.

"Who in the name of Lurline is that?" Boq asked, sounding irritated. Knowing I had only moments before I'd be forced to account for at least the legal portions of the last nineteen years, I attempted to forestall.

"No one. Boq, what have you been doing, then? Do you live here in Munchkinland?" _Obviously you do, or you wouldn't be chopping wood in the forest in the middle of Nowhere-land_.

"Yes, yes I do. Since Shiz. I married Miss Milla, you know." I tried to keep my jaw from dropping and bit my tongue to keep back a sharp remark. I could recall that Boq had disliked my tendency to analyze people rather ruthlessly in conversation with others, that he didn't always approve of my sharply angled opinions.

"How is she, then? Do you have children?"

I knew without looking that Boq was staring at me, perplexed at my polite demeanor.

"She's been fine these past few years, though before-"

"ELPHABA THROPP!" Fiyero came crashing loudly through some bushes, followed by a scratched and complaining Liir and a laughing Fala. He stopped short and stared at Boq.

"Master…Fiyero?" Boq managed at last. "What are you…didn't you…that is to say…"

"I was looking for my wife," said Fiyero.

"In the forests of Munchkinland?" spluttered Boq, before the full significance of what Fiyero had said hit him. "Your…do you mean that Miss Elphaba-" he turned to me. "You got _married_?"


End file.
